People Magazine held an online conference with Piers Anthony. The original link was http://www.pathfinder.com/@@56JqFABZwMAQLUK/people/interactive/transcripts/a/anthonytrans.html which has disappeared. The following is the contents of that interview. No copyright infringement is implied by the reproduction of this information. This is only done because information should not disappear forever from the public. Should the article or interview reappear in the future, the link will once again point to the original site.

All conference contents © People Magazine.

Question: Hi Piers...I sent you the poem "the loneliest heart." Do you remember me? I was just wondering what is happening with the book How Precious Was It While?

Piers Anthony: That book is the sequel to my autobiography and updates me for the last dozen years. It has about 20 poems written by readers. I've sent it to my agent who hopes that he can sell the book. But we don't know yet. There's also a small press publisher who is interested if we can't sell it to a large press. So I have no word yet, but I am hoping to sell the book complete with readers' poems. Some are really dramatic poems.

PEOPLE: I was gonna ask about your autobiography Bio of an Ogre. What stuff did you leave out that will go into this one? And what isn't going into either book?

Piers Anthony: Bio of an Ogre doesn't have the last dozen years. It covered me to age 50, and now I'm 62! The new one tells the truth about publishing. Thay's why I'm not sure I can get it published. Publishing is ugly. There is cheating. It is too bad when a writer has to engage a lawyer's services in order to get paid. But that is what happened to me. Most of it is just clumsiness. Publishers make horrendous misake that cost everybody.

PEOPLE: Presumably, none of this applies to TOR, which is highly reputed.

Piers Anthony: It applies to TOR too, which is why I am sure that TOR will not publish it.

Question: What would us fans have to do to get you to write the sequel to the Tyrant series?

PEOPLE: The questioner promises a national campaign.

Piers Anthony: The fans don't have to do anything. I have to find a publisher who wants it. I was up against economics—publishers would pay me several times what they did for Space Tyrant novels for a fantasy book. I'm like anybody else—I have to pay for my daughter's college. If a publisher gives me $100,000 for a fantasy book and only one-third of that for another novel, and they take the same time to write, I'll do what the publisher wants.

PEOPLE: Which of your series do you consider to be finished, and which are still "live?"

Piers Anthony: Xanth is still alive, Geoddysey is in doubt. I want to write it—but I have to get a publisher for what I write. And I'm not sure that I will be able to get publishers for it in the future. Probably Xanth is the only one that is still alive.

PEOPLE: At least one reader laments the fact that you won't write Iron Maiden. Do you wish that could come out?

Piers Anthony: Oh, I'd like to write it. But I won't write it unless I think I can get it published. If they wanted to make a book like that, I would be glad to write it. I don't do screenplays myself but my assistant has written a treatment and we are shopping it around for a television series. It's a project called Candle. I worked it up and gave it to my agent to see what he could do with it. It may go nowhere.

I can give a simple notion about its nature. It's a HOUSE, it's on a busy city street, and the back door opens upon an ancient forest, untrod by human foot. If you go out the back door, the FOREST surrounds the house. If you go out the front door, the CITY surrounds the house. That's the kind of dream I have: I like the city and the forest both! But I'm an ignoramus about Hollywood. It took me about 5 years to learn to recognize the name "Spielberg." I recognize it now but that's an example of how slow I am about stuff like this.

PEOPLE: That is a lovely notion ... and maybe a movie version would be best!